Business Web Accessibility - 2

Okay so firstly why make things accessible?

As I said in a previous article, there are many people that buy from the websites that have disabiliti which could affect the way they access websites. To include these people and enable them to spend thir money on your site it is wise to make a few adaptations.

A figure of 20-30% of the population is reported to have a form of disability that would affect the ability to surf the web, and ultimately buy from a site. That's a lot of money you could be losing!

Many changes are cost free and are standard good practice. Having an existing website with a lot of flash or frames could pose a few problems to make accessible but if you're starting out with a new sitew or have a relatively new one lets look at some fundamentals in more detail:

The aim of making your site accessible is to increase the amount of people that can access this site and ultimately buy more from you.

Thinking about this, consider people that have physical limitations such as blindness or limited limb use. The range of limitations can include auditory, visual, cognitive or physical.

If you have a site that is full of flash pictures or built on frames - how difficult do you think that person would find capturing information and also the navigation of the site?

If you are blind for instance - you cannot use a mouse, you would have no way of knowing where the cursor is at any point in time. Instead you rely on a screen reader and keyboard shortcuts.

That in itself takes a lot of learning so any help you can give by making your site simple and navigation structured and consistent.

If you have physical difficulties and the buttons on the webpage are to small, clicking on them brings a lot of problems. For example someone with MS who gets the shakes really would benefit from placing the cursor over the button, but if it's too small those shakes might just stop the person from clicking! A possible lost sale!! The shakes won't go away but if it only takes a slightly larger button then let's do it!

These people often use a PC as their lifeline - it's so much easier to browse websites and to buy, than to visit busy shops. So making their life a bit less frustrating can only be good for your business.

If you think that all of your potential customers are fit and healthy take another look at the stats above.

Personally if I haven't got my contacts or glasses I can't see small print on sites and I'm sure you wouldn't consider I had a disability!

How many people walk around with less to good eyesight? Are they just dismissing your site because they find it confusing or hard to read?

Oh just another thought for you - people with color blindness often cannot read text if the background colour is too close to the shade of the text!

No ranting just food for thought - I want you to get those sales!